Individual ice cream products are very often held on a stick. Sometimes the ice cream is in a wafer, generally a cone, rarely it is in an individual packaging and is consumed with a spoon. One of the reasons for this is that if the ice cream product is directly touched by fingers, it sticks.
It has been proposed to use chocolate or fat coatings on ice cream. This provides the required dry to touch feeling (i.e. not leaving residues on the skin) but on the other hand requires the use of fat. This does not fit with the health concerns of modern consumers.
There is therefore a need for a coating which provides a dry to touch feeling without having to use fat.
Water ice coating is already known for this purpose but presents a major taste problem since, actually, it has no taste at all and adding fructose or sucrose will lower the freezing point of the coating, rendering it gooey and sticky. If instead of this, artificial sweeteners are added (which will not impact on the freezing point of the coating and thus not present the drawbacks of sucrose or fructose) it has now been found that the coating is still very brittle, has no flexibility at all and will provide a very hard, brittle mouthfeel to consumers, something to avoid. Moreover, the very unflexible, rigid behaviour exhibited by a water ice coating leads to very fragile coatings which break and peel off very easily under the slightest deformation, again something to avoid.
In fact, whether there are artificial sweeteners or not in the water ice coating, the product looks shiny, showing a transparent film, wrongly suggesting that the product has been contaminated with water which then froze on its surface. Obviously, it is not something acceptable from a consumer standpoint.
There is therefore a need for a coating which:                tastes good,        is dry to touch        is not brittle        has a low energy content compared to a typical chocolate couveture that contains 5.52 kcal/gm.        is fat free whereas a typical chocolate couveture contains 32% (wt %) saturated fat.        
It has now been found that some polysaccharide compositions give rise to coatings which are less sticky and less prone to sinter than sucrose and fructose ones while providing the required taste and flexibility.
Tests and Definitions
Saccharides and Polysaccharides
The term “saccharides” refers to mono- and di-saccharides, and “polysaccharides” means polymers consisting of three or more saccharide units. Thus “saccharides” includes fructose, dextrose and sucrose.
The polysaccharides used in the present invention are preferably corn syrups with a dextrose equivalent (DE) of greater than 2 preferably >3 and more preferably >4. Corn syrups are complex multi-component sugar mixtures and the dextrose equivalent is a common industrial means of classification. Since they are complex mixtures their number average molecular weight <M>n can be calculated from the equation below. (Journal of Food Engineering, 33 (1997)
  DE  =      18016          <      M      ⁢              >        n            
Other polysaccharides, such as polydextrose and/or fructo-oligosaccharides may be used. Fructo-oligosaccharides are composed of linear chains of fructose units linked by β(2-1) bonds and often terminated by a glucose unit. Fructo-oligosaccharides include inulin, oligofructose (also sometimes called oligofructan) and kestose.
Sweeteners
The term “sweeteners” refers exclusively to sucrose, fructose, dextrose and artificial sweeteners (i.e. Sucralose [1,6-Dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D galactopyranoside], Aspartame [aspartyl phenyl-alanine methyl ester], Sodium saccharin, alitame, thaumatin, cyclamate, glycyrrhizin, stevioside, neohesperidine, sucralose, monellin, Acesulfame K or salts thereof and Neotame [N—[N-(3,3-dimethylbutyl)-L-alpha-aspartyl]-L-phenylalanine 1 methyl ester]. Thus sucrose, dextrose and fructose are both sweeteners and saccharides.
Preferably the sweeteners are sucrose and/or fructose.
Average Molecular Weight
For the purposes of this patent, the average molecular weight for a mixture of saccharides and polysaccharides is defined by the number average molecular weight <M>n calculated by the following equation:
      <    M    ⁢          >      n        =                    ∑                  w          i                            ∑                  (                                    w              i                        /                          M              i                                )                      =                  ∑                              N            i                    ⁢                      M            i                                      ∑                  N          i                    
Where wi is the mass of species i, Mi is the molar mass of species i and Ni is the number of moles of species i of molar mass Mi.
Relative Sweetness
Sweetness is relative to sucrose. As sucrose is the typical sweetener material used in food it is arbitrarily assigned a relative sweetness value of 1, with all sweetness intensities of other sugars/sweetener systems compared with this. Therefore a product with a Relative Sweetness of 0.1 would have the sweetness equivalent to a 10% solution of sucrose. A product with a Relative Sweetness of 0.25 would have the sweetness equivalent to a 25% sucrose solution.